Wilner on other Power 5s poaching the west

[UW_Doog_Bot]

He didn't list who the 8 players deciding on signing day were but Penis Swell chose Oregon and nearly all the rest chose USC. So the article is slightly melodramatic.

That being said I've been sounding the alarm bells on this for years. We should never cheer when some CA kid chooses Oklahoma or Notre Dame over USC or UCLA.

California, and the West in general, has greater competition for fewer elite recruits than the Southeast or Texas. Then if the outflows are greater than the inflows from outside the region it makes the conference even weaker.

Also every kid USC misses out on means more competition for the next kid down the line since we almost never go outside the region.

To some extent this is all mitigated by USC, Stanford, and even Oregon going national but ultimately if UW is going to win a National Championship we don't just need our own program to recruit at an elite level- we need the conference as a whole to be strong as well.

Kids are traveling between regions more than ever before as are families. They are less tied to the "hometown" than ever before. Recruiting reflects this. Either become a national brand or watch as your geographic footprint gets picked apart by those who are.

I know this is sort of the CW (the DM guys said five years ago the notion of "the fence" was obsolete because Twitter), I'm just not sure there's any hard evidence to back it up.

I'm with Coker and DDY that the fence is always priority one.

The work/relocation component that @UW_Doog_Bot noted is definitely true.

Agree with that, but I would question whether that is true for Fast Strategy or just for Slow.

While I don't have data to support my opinion if anything I'd say that fast strategy kids get moved around a lot more because of the instability of their situations. There's a whole lot of going to live with auntie or moving in with grandma etc.

I don't really see us losing many in state kids who have grown up here. Occasionally we do lose an in-state kid but if the answer to "the why" of that is that the kid has significant ties to another part of the country, has some shady issues, or some academic issues then I wouldn't really count that as "losing an in-state kid" in the same manner.

I think this staff has already created an effective fence around Wa State. I think the new coaching changes are only going to make that fence higher. Time to build a national brand and poach kids out of other regions and areas.